Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal Review

WML Guess Synopsis

In order to win the national cheer leading championship, a Texas high school pays Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Chris Webber, Jimmy King, and Ray Jackson to dress up as female cheerleaders.

Actual DirecTV Guide Synopsis

A new schoolteacher clashes with a group of unruly cheerleaders.

Level of Attention While Watching: Devoted Husband

Devoted Husband: Was giving the movie 100% of my attention

With Wife, but Thinking of Mistress: Watching the movie, but not giving it my full attention

Cheating Bastard: I wasn’t paying much attention to the movie at all

Jenna Dewan

Coach Carr

This is the first time I’ve seen Jenna Dewan in a movie, but I hope it’s not the last as she’ll certainly get a mention on my “Hottest Lifetimers List” whenever that comes out. Dewan plays Coach Carr and does a great job. She looks the part and acts the part making me feel as if she has cheerleading experience.

Ashley Benson

Brooke

When it comes to playing a hateable bitchy cheerleader, Ashley Benson nails the role as Brooke. I couldn’t have been the only viewer who thought she was nothing but a spoiled brat who got her way. She might have been a little overly mean in the movie, but something tells me the real life cheerleader she was portraying was the same way.

The Movie (with spoilers)

Don’t get this movie confused with Jalen Rose’s ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on the more popular and well known Fab Five who came together to play basketball at the University of Michigan, although both of them involve young kids basically running their school. I didn’t know what to expect from this movie and was surprised to see it was based on a true story. I’d never read anything about any Texas cheerleading scandal so the entire movie was news to me.

The movie starts off showing what a biznatch the head cheerleader, Brooke, is to the coach who immediately resigns in the opening scenes. That’s where the new coach Emma Carr comes into play since there is now a new cheerleader coach opening at the high school. Coach Carr is also a teacher at the school and introduces herself to some other teachers who start painting a terrible picture of the Fab Five on the cheerleading team. Carr finds out that five of the cheerleaders pretty much run the show and there have been multiple coaches in the past who have only lasted a few weeks and couldn’t put up with the Fab Five any longer.

Carr and the girls on the team click and everything seems to be going great until try outs for the upcoming cheer camp happen. After the try outs, there’s a co-captain named along with Brooke so that’s when the hell begins to break loose. The cheerleading camp is in New Orleans so all the girls have to stay together in a hotel. There’s the Fab Five but then there’s also the other girls and they can’t all get along. The new co-captain, Megan, wants to play a duct tape prank on some of the girls so Brooke throws a fit about it and then Coach Carr makes Brooke give the tape back but then tells Brooke and the rest of the Fab Five they can go with her to get other prank supplies. One of the girls gets a hold of Coach Carr’s phone w/o Carr knowing it and sends a racy text to another male teacher at the school. After Coach Carr finds out about this, she chews the girls out and things really start heating up between Carr and the Fab Five.

One of the big reasons Brooke and the rest of the Fab Five act the way they do is because they’re able to get away with so much thanks to Brooke’s mother, Lorene, who is also the principal of the school. Any issues brought to her attention about her daughter is just swept under the rug, such as school absences, mouthing off in class, talking on the phone, etc. At the same time, Principal Lorene doesn’t have a great relationship with her daughter so she doesn’t want to do anything to piss her off.

A cheerleader would REALLY date a guy who looked like this?

The Fab Five becomes the Fab Four during the movie as one of the girls fools around with another girl’s boyfriend (see right), which leads to an Intense Moment with Keith (see below). I don’t remember their names as they weren’t very memorable, but the boyfriend sure was as he was extremely unattractive and had red hair and had no business dating a cheerleader, even if they weren’t attractive.

More trouble happens when the Fab Four want to have a good time on a weekend and want to get some alcohol in their cheerleader outfits with fake IDs since I know I see a lot of 21 year olds wearing cheerleader outfits. Luckily they have some guys show up to the gas station with booze already so they don’t need to go with that great idea I just mentioned. Even more lucky there’s an adult store across the street from where they were going to buy the booze so they carry the booze into the store all while wearing their cheerleading outfits. What a great opportunity to take pictures and make a video and post it on the internet right? RIGHT! And that’s what they do, they film themselves in their cheerleading outfits while holding alcohol and sex toys. The video eventually makes it way to Principal Lorene and she has to do something to cover it up. This might also be when the Fab Four get suspended from the cheerleading team, can’t quite remember, details are merging together.

Since the Fab Four are suspended from the cheerleading team, they’re unable to participate in the drills with other girls so when Coach Carr calls in sick on day, that leaves another girl not named Brooke in charge and the Fab Four decide to leave instead of sitting in the stands wasting their time. Their better plans include drinking in the school parking lot in their car during school hours. After they’re nice and tipsy they decide to leave and go somewhere and pull out of their parking spot when a school security guard spots them and that’s when one of my favorite lines is delivered by Brooke to the security guard and it goes…

“Do you know who I am?”

As some advice to you, if you ever feel the need to repeat this line in a serious situation, that means your ego is big or the other person probably doesn’t know who you are, just look at LeBron James’ mom as an example. Back to the cheerleaders… this crosses the line for Coach Carr as Principal Lorene is yet again going to try and sweep this one under the rug.

Coach Carr is somehow forced to resign and then goes on the news and tells her side of the story about some of the things that happen at the school. This makes the school look bad and then a PI (that’s Private Investigator to those of you who don’t know) comes in to look into the situation. After questioning everyone and getting their side of the story, this leads to Principal Lorene getting suspended as principal and some girls getting kicked off the squad, but Coach Carr still doesn’t get her job back. The movie then ends with a heart felt cheerleading competition where the girls tear it up and Coach Carr is there to see it and it’s smiles all around.

Intense Moments with Keith

Intense Moment #1

The first intense moment to me was the text message sent to another male teacher from Coach Carr’s phone. They seemed to be getting a little friendly so I was thinking this may have led to some marital issues for at least one of them, but not much came out of it. Would have been cool if the male teacher got excited about the racy text and then tried to pursue it which then would have led to some marital issues.

Intense Moment #2

This moment was way more intense than the first one. One of the Fab Five girls was fooling around with the boyfriend of another Fab Five girl. In her defense, the ugly red haired boyfriend said he wasn’t seeing the other one. When the original girlfriend saw the cheater woman in the school halls, the other Fab Five members started chasing her around, finally they could caught up her and that’s where the cat fight and beat down happened and the Fab Five became the Fab Four. I also believe the line “Fugly slut” was used which was pretty awesome and had a nice added effect.

Dopplegangers

Red head Fab Five cheerleader looks A LOT like Chucky from “Child’s Play” – just sayin…

Other Possible Titles

“Mean Girls Club”

“Spoiled Bratz”

“Your Mom is the Principal”

Closing Thoughts

The only thing that really disappointed me about this movie was the fact that there were no murders, but since it was based on a true story, that’s a good thing. I’d be curious to know the real story of the things that went on and see/hear what all the girls are doing today.